Local regulations and/or norms exist throughout various geographical or jurisdictional regions for conducting business. A product marketed or used in each region needs to comply and/or support the local regulation/norm to be competitive. Similarly, different types of users of a product may have different requirements for various aspects of the product. A product targeting multiple types of users needs to support varying requirements of different types of users to be competitive. Internet-based promotion and distribution have accelerated and broadened market reach of products to global customers. Customizing a product to support a wide range of regional requirements and satisfy vastly different types of users reachable via the Internet is a time-consuming task. Techniques for customizing a product prior to the Internet era are not scalable to meet the challenges created by the Internet-based promotion and distribution. Without overcoming these challenges, a global product targeting a vast number of different types of users across international regions cannot compete with a local product focusing on a single type of users.
A secular shift to the adoption of cloud-based computing is in progress worldwide in the small business space. Typically, a globally-scaled software solution includes a cloud-based financial management solution for small businesses across the world. Examples may include a product that speaks the local language, is compliant to the local norms and regulations, and greatly simplifies worldwide users' bookkeeping and accounting responsibilities while allowing the owners to focus on running the business and serving customers.
The market opportunity provided by the secular shift to cloud computing is a massive one. A software provider in the domestic market may become the same trusted brand to small businesses worldwide, including developed economies such as those of the European Union, as well as rapidly emerging economies such as Brazil and India. To accomplish such a task, a platform is necessary that allows the software provider to enter new markets quickly, with low cost and high quality, as well as to stay compliant in these markets in real time after entry. The platform should allow the software provider to overcome barriers encountered by prior art approaches such as: (i) requirements gathering, product design and implementation based on one-market-at-a-time, (ii) monolithic, inflexible, non-extensible, everything-in-code implementation approach, and (iii) centralized, serialized market prioritization and execution.